Leonard Cohen Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Cutting, Shining

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.355, Omnibus Press

• Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Poetry, Ashes

  "My favourite word in songwriting history is 'that'" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.

• People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, People, Obscure

  "Telling It on the Mountain : Although Leonard Cohen has retreated to a Zen center to write music and poetry, a tribute album being released this week could bring new fans". Interview with Robert Hilburn, articles.latimes.com. September 24, 1995.

• We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Hard Work, Writing

  "Leonard Cohen: 'All I've got to put in a song is my own experience'" by Dorian Lynskey, www.theguardian.com. January 19, 2012.

• I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Want, Pay

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Wings

• I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, People

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.346, Omnibus Press

• I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Order, Knows

• It's four in the morning, the end of december I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.

  Leonard Cohen

  Morning, Writing, Four

  Song: Famous Blue Raincoat, 1971

• I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Thinking, Needs

  "'I have been satirised as suicidal and self-indulgent' - a classic Leonard Cohen interview from the vaults". Interview with Mike Jahn, www.theguardian.com. November 29, 2011.

• My page was too white
  My ink was too thin
  The day wouldn't write
  What the night pencilled in.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Night, White

• I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work - just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Luck, Want

  BBC Radio 1FM Interveiw, 1994.

• I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Giving, Use

• I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Thinking

• The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Long

  "Leonard Cohen: giving Nobel to Bob Dylan like 'pinning medal on Everest'". www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2016.

• It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Long

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